HueComb

Dust to Dust

#bbbcbc

A neutral that has no useful hue — it reads as a grey. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.

Hex

#bbbcbc

RGB

187, 188, 188

OKLCh

79.4% 0.001 197.1°

CIELAB (D50)

76.2, -0.4, -0.1

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 30 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it — this part of the space is crowded, and the names here are finer distinctions than most people make.
  • It uses almost none of the chroma available here: this is a grey with a trace of hue rather than a colour.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 36.3; on black, Lc -66.2. The sign is the polarity, which the WCAG ratio discards.
  • Built into an eleven-step scale, 10 of the 10 adjacent pairs stay ΔE00 2 apart — see the ramp.
  • All three dichromacies see it as very nearly the same colour you do: its hue is not the part carrying its identity.

Text on this colour

White text

1.90:1 — fails AA

Black text

11.03:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at11.03:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#767777 is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.

Try it against your own background

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#bbbcbc

protanopia

#bcbcbc · ΔE00 0.6

deuteranopia

#bcbcbc · ΔE00 0.6

tritanopia

#bcbcbf · ΔE00 2.0

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isCovered in Platinum at ΔE00 0.53: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Covered in PlatinumΔE00 0.53 · #b9baba
  • Glacier GreyΔE00 0.541 · #bbbcbd
  • Gravel FintΔE00 0.587 · #bbbbbb
  • Baby Talk GreyΔE00 0.724 · #bababa
  • Noghrei SilverΔE00 0.74 · #bdbebd
  • Rough AsphaltΔE00 0.763 · #bdbebf
  • Rocky ShelterΔE00 0.797 · #b8baba
  • Tin SoldierΔE00 0.801 · #bebebe
  • Fortress GreyΔE00 1.146 · #b8b8b8
  • Vapour BlueΔE00 1.171 · #bebdbd
  • Anti Rainbow GreyΔE00 1.208 · #bebdbc
  • SilverΔE00 1.231 · #c0c0c0

10 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.